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If It Moves, Tax It
OMG! WTF? From No Pasaran comes a report that a French MEP is advocating a tax on SMS text messages and emails. The cash extracted from the multi-billion pound industry would be directed towards the EU's budget.
Says Alain Lamassoure, "A small tax on an SMS from Paris to another French city could be allocated to the French government, but taxes on emails or SMS messages from Paris to Rome could be dedicated to the EU budget.
"In France an SMS costs 15 cents. We could tax it by 1.5 cents, or less."
Not content with a scheme to hit text-messagers, he's also got his eyes on email. Lamassoure suggests a tiny €0.00001 tax on each email, arguing "This is peanuts, but given the billions of transactions every day, this could still raise an immense income."
Lamassoure is a member of Chirac's UMP and sits with the centre-right EPP-ED grouping in the European Parliament. If a centre-right group entertains ideas to stifle new technology with taxation, what hope is there for Europe?
:-(
